


Worldbuilding 14: Eleven PM

by JoAsakura



Series: X-Force: Mutant Crimes Investigation Unit [13]
Category: MCIU
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-22
Updated: 2010-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate can't sleep, so he snoops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worldbuilding 14: Eleven PM

Sleep doesn't come easy to Nate, ever. The white-noise chatter of telepathy unguarded, the pains of injuries long and improperly healed, the non-consciously noticed ache from where his techno-organics encroach into his flesh in femtometre nibbles.

Sometimes, when it seems even harder to reach than usual, Nate steps outside of his body, leaving it still and sheathed in the same absent-minded TK that keeps it coherent. No physical aches in his astral form, but the subliminal rantings of New York's teeming millions get between his aetheric cells like sand in a swimsuit, itchy and omnipresent.

The city spreads out beneath him, consciousnesses glittering like trinkets on a tray. But for Nate,the ones that shine the brightest are those of his people. He thinks of them as his family, as his clan. They're more than a team, but he'll never tell them that. It's better they don't know how attached he is to them.

And so Nate drifts, ghosting at the edges of his loved ones' lives to calm his own mind.

~~

'Star slides, silent and graceful from the bed he shares with Rictor. Red bangs dusting across Ric's tan skin as the warrior bends to press a kiss to his lover's forehead before making his night rounds. Nate recognises it as a form of OCD, 'Star's need to make sure their space is secure before he can commit himself to sleep.

He sits by the window and listens to the noise of the city at night for a few moments, eyes closed and Nate can almost hear him remembering the cacophony of sound that fills even the most desolate corners of the Wildways before he closes it tight and returns to Rictor's side.

~~

Jimmy is laughing, tapping out a chat message to his on-again, off-again, long-distance girlfriend, Risque. The netbook seems like a tiny toy perched on his lap as he carefully strikes the keys, not wanting to ruin what is apparently a very erotic moment with a ridiculous typo. Their time difference is such that he has to make the most of their tiny shared window of being awake and not working.

So many of Nate's "kids" have paired off with each other, or with others within their strange little circle over the years, that he's been a little worried about Jimmy's relentless inability to find a date of any kind. So, Nate has the good manners to not look too closely, but he's happy that Jimmy's happy.

~~

Nate stops short in Monet's place. He's gotten the sense recently that something new has been burgeoning between her and Cypher, but when he slips through the wall to see her picking up Doug to carry him into her bedroom, he doesn't follow. They're both in enough of a state of deshabille that Nate can figure out what's probably going to occur next.

Even though neither of them weren't amongst his originals, he's come to love them both, so different, yet so similar in their inability to truly reach out to others. To see them reaching out to each other? Nate leaves with a grin on his face as some extremely filthy French drifts down the hallway.

~~  
Nate skims the edges of Terry's fitful phone conversation with her mother, the original Banshee. 'Berto drowning himself in the ample curves of a hostess at the Hellfire Club.

He pauses, watching Adam-X sit crosslegged in front of his television, some talk show droning on unheard as he sketches, fingers stained black from a stump of charcoal.

He's surprisingly good, delicate lines tracing the contours of a familiar face.

~~

He doesn't visit Sam when he's in astral form. The temptation's too great and the wound still hurts even though it's twenty years gone past.

So he ghosts through Domino's apartment, guns hidden behind shelves filled with hundreds of books that Domino has read each of. She likes it when people underestimate her- Dom has never been one to give up an advantage, so she hides her intellect under a hard-bitten mercenary snarl.

Something about Nate's psychic ghost tweaks the probability fields that are always shifting about her, and Dom, clad only what Nate is certain is one of his own shirts, smiles at nothing. "Nathan. Go to sleep." She purrs, clicking down the volume on her TV. "Or come over. No one likes a peeping tom."

He feels the tweak of their lo-fi psychic bond and Nate Pryor grins to himself. Maybe all is right with the world tonight.


End file.
